Gerald Steinberg is professor of political science at Bar Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor

As members the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America gather for their annual meeting in Jerusalem, the threat posed by anti-Israel demonization and political warfare is a central concern. In the US and Canada, this threat is remains confined to university campuses, some labor unions, and hostile church groups, but the hatred of Israel is gaining ground among the Left, including among a small but vocal group of radical Jews. To combat and defeat this threat, it is necessary to engage with the rational Left — the students and others who are most vulnerable to the moral language and symbols of campaigns that single out and target Israel.

Ameinu, a Jewish organization that supports “progressive causes in Israel”, has taken a refreshing and long-overdue step in naming, shaming and pushing back against these hard-core anti-Zionists. In a publication entitled “The Third Narrative: Progressive Answers to the Far Left’s Critiques of Israel”, Ameinu condemns the “relentless barrage of accusations against Israel on the web, on campus and in other settings”.

This notably harsh language is fully justified. For many years, liberal values and moral causes have been exploited for immoral political warfare against Israel, including boycott campaigns and false accusations of “apartheid”. Fundamental principles such as human rights, peace, and democracy are cynically abused in distinctly anti-progressive and anti-liberal attacks that demonize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Ameinu’s counter-offensive is particularly important for Jewish students who are naturally sympathetic to the language and appeal of social justice, but have little knowledge of the history and facts, and are easily brainwashed. Many well-intentioned liberals are taken in by a well-financed network of self-proclaimed human rights groups obsessed with hatred of Israel, and by marginal individuals who misappropriate the Jewish framework of “tikkun olam” (repairing the world). The discredited Goldstone report, published in 2009, whose false claims caused major damage, demonstrated the destructive influence of this network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

The radical anti-Zionist Left also promotes what is euphemistically referred to as a “bi-national solution”, and invents legal arguments, such as a “right of return” for millions of Palestinian who claim refugee status. Both concepts have no substantive foundation, and are the equivalent of wiping Israel off the map.

This political warfare goes far beyond criticism of occupation and settlements, and debates on Israel’s policies on the complexities of borders, Palestinian terrorism, and security. In launching their campaign to counter the radical Left, Ameinu’s leaders recognize that the use of terms like apartheid, accompanied by systematic discrimination against the Jewish homeland, and boycott campaigns (BDS) are designed to roll back the clock to 1948 and delegitimize Israel, regardless of borders. As many Israelis have long known, this means that even with a peace agreement, the hatred and mass terror would continue, nullifying benefits from concessions required for a two-state solution.

In what they call “The Third Narrative initiative”, Ameinu seeks “to engage people on the left who appreciate informed and passionate objections to Israeli policies and behavior….but also suspect that it is wrong to lay all blame for the conflict at the feet of Israelis.” On this basis, they are providing tools “to combat unfair or inaccurate attacks on Israel.”

This is an agenda that goes beyond the simple-minded ideological barriers that have been created within the Zionist movement, and highly destructive attacks from the left on the right, and visa versa. Internal ideological warfare, which is also (and in some cases, primarily) a power struggle involving individuals seeking to expand their own importance, has severely impeded the counter-attack against demonization. Instead of cooperating against a common threat, officials from other “progressive” organizations claiming to “love Israel” have been silent in the face of loathing, hatred and intolerance.

While repeating the slogans of human rights, these organizations do not organize protests in front of United Nations meetings that ignore Syrian war crimes, and instead continue to promote blood libels against Israel. In contrast, Ameinu has joined other groups in fighting the exhaustive battles over “Israel apartheid week” on campus, BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions) and other ugly expressions of modern antisemitism.

In its initiative, Ameinu asks “Do you know a student who could use our support when confronted with charges of ‘Israel is an Apartheid state’ or that ‘Israel has committed ethnic cleansing?’ Do you have neighbors or coworkers asking difficult questions about the Israeli- Palestinian conflict?” The same questions are asked by Zionists on the right, as well as the majority of rational centrists – on this issue, there are no political divisions.

If the more powerful groups on the Jewish Left would follow this lead and act on their own liberal principles, these attacks could be defeated. For the many organizations and constituencies that are represented at the meeting of the Jewish Federations of North America, many of which define themselves as progressives, this is a central challenge.

Gerald M. Steinberg is professor of political science at Bar Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor

Although the cabinet is only now giving this high priority, the boycott campaign targeting Israeli firms and companies that do business with Israel has been active for more than ten years. The BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions) is led by the Palestinian leadership, in close alliance with a network of political advocacy non-governmental organizations (NGOs) funded largely by European governments. In order to successfully blunt and defeat this threat, it is necessary to understand the sources of BDS campaigns, their scope, alliances, primary tactics, and vulnerabilities.

BDS is a form of political warfare against the State of Israel based on the exploitation of human rights and humanitarian principles, double standards, invidious comparisons with South African apartheid, and false allegations of "war crimes" and violations of international law. (The discredited 2009 Goldstone report on Gaza is one of many examples of this process.)

Although often expressed in terms of opposition to the post-1967 Israeli occupation and settlements, the leaders of BDS campaigns repeatedly express their rejection of any Jewish right to self-determination, regardless of borders. The radical BDS movement supports Palestinian refugee demands, promotes the 1948 narrative of Palestinian victimization, and a "single state solution," meaning the elimination of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. In addition, the network of church-based NGOs that fund and promote BDS often include antisemitic themes and images. Therefore, the claim that BDS will end if a two-state peace agreement is reached is inconsistent with the evidence.

The most effective and immediate strategy to blunt BDS and other forms of political warfare is to end the massive funding given to radical NGOs that promote these anti-Israel campaigns, particularly in Europe. NGO Monitor research has exposed tens of millions of Euros provided annually to NGOs via the EU and European governments. For more than ten years, this highly politicized NGO funding has been allocated for discriminatory anti-Israel warfare through secret processes under frameworks for humanitarian aid, democracy and human rights, and other universal moral principles. This money enables the network of ostensibly "non-political" organizations to flood the media, universities, parliaments and other platforms with a steady flow of anti-Israel demonization.

There are at least 80 such NGOs, active in promoting BDS in Europe, North America, and elsewhere. Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP) – the leading Israeli NGO promoting BDS – was funded directly by the European Union, via both the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights and the Partnership for Peace frameworks. (Requests for documents on these grants based on the EU's freedom of information guidelines have been denied on the absurd grounds of "pubic security".) Ali Abunimah and the NGO known as Electronic Intifada – among the most visible participants in BDS campaigns – have been funded indirectly by the Dutch government through the Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation (ICCO), which has an annual budget of over €80 million.

The role of government-funded Christian "humanitarian" groups in promoting obsessive anti-Zionism is much wider, including ICCO, Christian Aid (UK), Diakonia (Sweden), and Trocaire (Ireland). ICCO is also involved in lobbying the Dutch pension funds to divest from Israeli banks and versus cooperation with the Mekorot water company. CWP, Electronic Intifada, and many Palestinian NGOs that receive European government funding are pressing Oxfam International, which receives funding from the UK, EU, Dutch, and other governments, to join the obsessive campaign against SodaStream. They want the humanitarian superpower to dismiss Scarlett Johansson as an Oxfam "ambassador" following the actress's role in promoting the Israeli firm.

The first step in confronting European governments that provide most of the funds for these organizations is to demand the implementation of democratic transparency principles in Europe. This would expose the sources of influence behind this NGO funding to independent analysis, and highlight the systematic abuse of European "soft power" for boycotts and demonization against Israeli democracy. On this basis, Israeli and European officials can negotiate mutually acceptable guidelines for funding political advocacy NGOs, which would prevent grants to groups that promote double standards, the discriminatory singling out of Israel, lawfare based on "war crimes" and similar false allegations, and the denial of the right of the Jewish people to sovereign equality.

While these measures will not bring an immediate end to BDS and political warfare, they constitute the essential first steps towards a viable counter-strategy.

Negotiations with Israel will lead to “zero results” if not fortified by armed resistance, a senior Fatah official said, adding that the first signs of a new Palestinian uprising have already begun to appear on the ground.

An American framework agreement expected to be presented in the coming weeks to the negotiating teams will never receive Palestinian endorsement if based on parameters currently being voiced by the Americans, said Tawfiq Tirawi, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee and head of the official Palestinian investigation committee into the death of Yasser Arafat, speaking to Lebanese news channel Al-Mayadeen Thursday.

“We [in Fatah] know what the Israelis and Americans are suggesting [in the negotiating room]. So far, the negotiations are taking place only with the Americans, not the Israelis, and the Americans are liars. There is no framework agreement. It’s a lie. Even if Kerry [presents] an agreement, Palestinians will reject it. There will be a vote, either inside Fatah or among the Palestinian leadership, and the American proposals will be rejected,” Tirawi said.

A number of senior Palestinian officials have voiced public skepticism regarding the possibility of negotiations with Israel leading to a deal, as the nine-month time frame for talks approaches its end in April. Last month, PLO official Yasser Abed Rabbo blasted US Secretary of State John Kerry for “breaking a promise” to end negotiations on all core issues during the original framework.

But Tirawi voiced skepticism that negotiations alone could ever produce a Palestinian state.

“There is no possibility of a Palestinian state being established on the West Bank and Gaza in the coming 20 years. None at all. Anyone who believes otherwise is wrong. Negotiations will bring us nothing … we, all Palestinian factions, must return to the cycle of action. When we will do this, many things will change.”

Asked what he meant by the cycle of action, Tirawi clarified he was speaking of “resistance in all of its forms.”

“Steadfastness is also resistance, negotiations are also a form of resistance, but there must be something on the ground as well … weapons, popular resistance, there are 100 methods to resist.”

Palestinians were pushed into negotiations with Israel by a consensus of Western and Arab states which insisted on diplomacy, leaving the Palestinian leadership no option but to agree, Tirawi said.

“It’s true that most PLO factions were against [entering negotiations], but there’s something called Palestinian national interests. Did we compromise on any of our principles? No. That’s what is important.”

Tirawi’s words were tacitly directed at PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who consistently speaks out against armed violence toward Israel, preferring to focus efforts on “popular resistance,” namely boycotts, demonstrations, and limited violence such as stone throwing. In a recent speech before a crowd of Jerusalem activists, Abbas praised the behavior of villagers from Qusra, near Nablus, who apprehended “with their bare hands” settlers suspected of preparing a price tag attack.

The resumption of armed resistance, Tirawi argued, must be done in an organized and coordinated manner, not sporadically.

“There should be a strategic national plan that all organizations can agree upon, both within the PLO and without it,” he said.

Tirawi noted that the first signs of a new Palestinian uprising could already be felt on the ground in Palestinian towns and villages: increased stone throwing, tire burning, confrontations with settlers and soldiers.

“The big explosion in Palestine is coming. All of Israel’s actions have placed the Palestinian public under immense pressure. They have no choice but to explode in the face of the occupation.”

Speaking as head of the investigation team into the death of Yasser Arafat, Tirawi rejected as “political” the French forensic report released last month ruling out the possibility that the late Palestinian president died of poisoning.

The Israeli company SodaStream has come under fire for its factory (c.) in Mishor Adumim, an industrial zone located in the desert hills west of the Israeli settlement Maale Adumim.

Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor

Azzariah, West Bank

American actress Scarlett Johansson has been criticized as naïve and irresponsible for endorsing SodaStream, an Israeli company that operates a factory in the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim  to the detriment of Palestinian rights, say critics.

The Jewish actress's promotion of the company in a Superbowl ad has propelled an international campaign to boycott the home sodamaker and today forced the actress to step down as a global ambassador for the humanitarian agency Oxfam.

But those most familiar with the factory  Palestinians who work there  largely side with Ms. Johansson.

"Before boycotting, they should think of the workers who are going to suffer," says a young man shivering in the pre-dawn darkness in Azzariah, a West Bank town cut off from work opportunities in Jerusalem by the concrete Israeli separation wall. Previously, he earned 20 shekels ($6) a day plucking and cleaning chickens; now he makes nearly 10 times that at SodaStream, which also provides transportation, breakfast, and lunch.

As a few dozen men in hoodies and work coats trickle out of the alleys to the makeshift bus stop where they wait for their ride to the factory, another adds, "If SodaStream closes, we would be sitting in the streets doing nothing."

The SodaStream controversy is part of the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign, which Palestinians launched in July 2005 as an effort to force Israel to end the occupation of the Palestinian territories, recognize Israeli Arab's full rights, and promote the Palestinian right of return.

Speaking anonymously on a largely deserted street, with no Israeli SodaStream employees present, all but one of those interviewed said they opposed the boycott, given the lack of alternative job opportunities in the West Bank. That underscores Israeli claims that a boycott would be counterproductive, undermining the cooperation and prosperity that could boost peace prospects in the region.

However, lawyers and labor activists say the picture is not that clear. While Palestinians earn roughly twice as much working at Israeli businesses in the West Bank, they lack labor rights and undermine Palestinian national aspirations. But many have little option; the Palestinian Authority has failed to leverage billions of dollars of aid to create more job opportunities.

"There has been little effort, whether on the part of the Palestinian Authority (PA) or the international community, to shut down Israeli factories and provide Palestinians with humane, dignified work," says Diana Buttu, an international human rights lawyer and former adviser to the Palestinian negotiations team.

Why Palestinians work at Israeli companies

By any measure, Israel's economy dwarfs the Palestinian economy, with a gross domestic product (GDP) of $252 billion compared to $8 billion, due in part to Israeli restrictions on Palestinian travel and trade that thwarts business. Every port, border crossing, and airport accessible from the Palestinian territories is controlled by Israel with the exception of a pedestrian-only crossing at Rafah, Gaza, which is controlled by Egypt.

Per capita GDP in Israel is more than 10 times that of Palestinians, while Palestinian unemployment (23 percent) is more than triple the Israeli rate (7 percent), according to figures provided to the Monitor by the Manufacturers Association of Israel.

That has prompted about 69,000 Palestinian workers  10 percent of the Palestinian labor force  to work in the Israeli economy, where those who manage to secure a permit or risk working illegally earn an average daily wage of 164 shekels ($47), compared to 84 shekels ($24) in the PA economy.

Omar Jibarat of Azzariah, the father of a newborn, is one of those who works in Israel, leaving home well before 6 a.m. for a construction job in Tel Aviv. Though he makes good money, he spends four hours in transit every day and would rather work at the SodaStream factory 15 minutes away.

"I would love to work for SodaStream. They're quite privileged. People look up to them," Mr. Jibarat says. "It's not the people who want to boycott, it's the officials."

That's a common refrain among the SodaStream workers who show up after Jibarat catches his ride.

Leaning up against the cement half-walls of the bus stop, jackets pulled up over their cold hands and faces and cigarette butts glowing in the dark, they blame the PA for failing to create jobs while taking a political stand against Israeli business that do.

"The PA can say anything it wants and no one will listen because it's not providing an alternative," says one man, a 2006 political science graduate of Al Quds University bundled in a jacket bearing the SodaStream logo. As for reports that the company doesn't honor labor rights, that's "propaganda," he says. "Daniel [Birnbaum, the CEO of SodaStream,] is a peacemaker."

Mr. Birnbaum told the Jewish Forward this week that the West Bank factory has been a "pain" due to all the criticism. But he says he's committed to his Palestinian employees, and sees the company as providing a haven of coexistence that can boost prosperity and prospects for peace.

"I'm not going to throw them to the street. I have an obligation to these people," he said in a video made by the company last year. "My hope, my prayer, my belief, and my responsibility at SodaStream is that we will fulfill the prophecy from the book of Isaiah: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war anymore. Instead of learning war, let them learn how to make a sodamaker."

What's behind the boycott movement

But many supporters of peace on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides insist that even if companies like SodaStream enable individual Palestinians to earn a better livelihood, they are part of a broader settlement enterprise that is detrimental to individual rights and national aspirations.

One of the workers waiting for the SodaStream bus this morning says he hates the fact that he's working in an Israeli settlement, and lies to people when they inquire about his work.

"I'm ashamed I'm working there," he says. "I feel this is our land, there should be no [Israeli] factory on this land."

He feels like a "slave," working 12 hours a day assembling parts  drilling in 12,000 screws a day, he adds.

While Israeli labor laws technically apply in the settlements, labor rights organization Kav LaOved says it is poorly enforced. Inspections, which are considered the essence of labor law enforcement, are reportedly sparse. Abed Dari, the organization's field coordinator in the Jordan Valley and Mishor Adumim, the industrial zone where SodaStream's factory is located, estimates that 95 percent of Palestinian employees of Israeli businesses in those areas do not earn the minimum wage of 4,300 shekels ($1,230).

Dari says SodaStream is one of the few companies in Mishor Adumim that does pay minimum wage, but adds that his organization's worker hotline received a complaint about some 100 workers being fired recently, due to "seasonal" hiring practices. Workers in Azzariah mentioned that some fellow workers had recently been let go, which they attributed to boycott pressure.

As one of Israel's largest food and beverage exporters, which ships to 45 countries, SodaStream indeed has international reach  and thus is potentially more vulnerable to international opinion. But Yonah Lloyd, president of SodaStream, says the company does not act in response to boycott pressure.

"The Palestinian employee base in the last five years has grown from 100 to 500," Mr. Lloyd says. "And it will continue to grow."

Debate in Israel

In a country where families can include everyone from left-wing peaceniks to strongly ideological settlers, the SodaStream issue has generated debate among relatives and friends. It has also led to heated Facebook conversations over the relative importance of Palestinian prosperity and freedom  and the best way to achieve both.

"I think it's a really tough thing, and we're weighing two different important values," says Elisheva Goldberg, a writer in Jerusalem who says it's critical to remember the limitations facing Palestinians working in Area C under Israeli occupation.

"If their other option is to go and pluck chickens, what does that say about the space they're living in, the barriers they're facing?"

But for the Palestinian workers in Azzariah, their main priority is feeding their families  or preparing to start one.

"SodaStream is my hope, to enable me to get married, to get everything," says the former chicken worker, as the sun rises over the littered street. Then he steps on the bus to go to work.

I had an e-mail exchange this week with a fellow who really really doesn't like us. On the topic of that Sodastream factory in Mishor Adumim, he informed me that the Palestinian workers there are treated as slaves. When I suggested I might try to see their payrolls so as to test his proposition, he backed off: payrolls don't prove anything, he told me, the only thing that's important is that Palestine isn't sovereign.

Which got me thinking. The Israeli-Arab conflict famously makes many otherwise reasonably normal people lose their marbles, so that they engage in all sorts of mumbo-jumbo. The Sodastream story seems to be such a case. In any other context, worldwide, a private company maintaining a factory in an underdeveloped country so as to take advantage of its lower labor costs would be regarded as a boon for the hosting country (if perhaps not for the rich country the factory had previously been in). Sodastream, however, isn't paying hundreds of Palestinian workers what they'd get from a Palestinian employer. It's paying the Palestinian laborers Israeli wages, with the social benifits mandated by Israeli law.

Nobody lives in the Sodastream factory: it's a factory. If ever there is peace between Israel and Palestine, Israeli owned factories in Palestine employing Palestinians is precisely the sort of thing everyone should be wishing for. Not for the "soft" advantages of people working alongside one another, which is the kind of thing one can't easily measure: for the "hard", quantifiable advantage of employment and foreign curreny.

In any other context, this is called FDI (foriegn direct investment) and is eagerly sought by politicians and toted up by economists. When it comes to Israel-Palestine, however, normal discourse goes silent.

The Forward went to the SodaStream factory in Mishor Adumim and spoke to the CEO, Daniel Birnbaum.

Birnbaum is not at all a right wing fanatic. Far from it. He is as liberal a person as you can find. He does not support Israel's claim to Judea and Samaria. He would not have set up the factory in Mishor Adumim, but it was there when he took over the company. And he shows that he is far more pro-Palestinian than all of the "pro-Palestinian activists" combined.

[T]hough he wouldn’t have opened the factory at its current site, Birnbaum said that its presence here is now a reality, and he won’t bow to political pressure to close it — even though the company is about to open a huge new plant in the Negev, within Israel’s internationally-recognized boundaries, which will replicate all functions of the West Bank plant, and dwarf it.

The reason for staying is loyalty to approximately 500 Palestinians who are among the plant’s 1,300 employees, Birnbaum claimed. While other employees could relocate on the other side of the Green Line if the plant moved, the West Bank Palestinian workers could not, and would suffer financially, he argued.

“We will not throw our employees under the bus to promote anyone’s political agenda,” he said, adding that he “just can’t see how it would help the cause of the Palestinians if we fired them.”

...Birnbaum’s advisor, Maurice Silber, said that within the company “everybody is against the occupation.” But it does not follow, he said, that because SodaStream operates in an occupied area, it violates human rights. Eventually, he said, SodaStream could become the “seed of the future Palestinian economy.”

At the plant’s cafeteria, awareness of the current international controversy over Scarlett Johannson’s new role at the company was clearly widespread among employees. During the Forward’s visit, Birnbaum took to the cafeteria floor to give some 250 Palestinian workers a kind of pep talk about the issue, urging them to ignore the political attacks. “We are making history for the Palestinian people and the Israeli people,” he told them in Hebrew, followed by a translator who rendered his comments into Arabic. Birnbaum reassured the workers about their jobs and said he wanted to bring “more and more hands” into the factory as SodaStream grows.

The Palestinians applauded these comments. But then Birnbaum added with a flourish: “Scarlett Johannson would be proud of you!” And at the sound of Johannson’s name — even before the translation — applause among the assembly of mostly male, 30-something Palestinian workers burst out again, palpably louder.

During discussions between a Forward reporter and about a half-dozen of these Palestinian employees, conducted out of earshot of Israeli managers, none complained of labor abuses, or of receiving pay below the Israeli minimum wage. Asked about the calls by anti-occupation activists to boycott SodaStream, one spoke about the dearth of jobs in the Palestinian Authority economy.

So who cares more about Palestinian Arabs - SodaStream or the Israel haters?

With each passing day, the answer becomes more and more obvious.

This SodaStream "controversy" was manufactured out of whole cloth by people with an anti-Israel, not a pro-Palestinian, agenda.

It is backfiring on them, as the world sees that the people obsessed over SodaStream don't care one bit about real live Palestinians.

The Arabs who work for SodaStream make it clear whose side they are on. And their actions and words show just how much the anti-Israel crowd lies.

The world is waking up to these lies.

Expect to see some furious logical obfuscation in the hate sites as they try to pretend that they know better than Palestinians what Palestinians want.

“Everyone works together: Palestinians, Russians, Jews,” a Palestinian employee named Rasim at the Maale Adumim site told JTA. Rasim has worked at the plant for four months and asked that his last name not be published. “Everything is OK. I always work with Jews. Everyone works together, so of course we’re friends.”

“I feel humiliated and I am also disgraced as a Palestinian, as the claims in this video are all lies. We Palestinian workers in this factory always feel like we are enslaved,” M. said.

...When asked if there was discrimination between black and white Jews, M. replied, “Yes, for sure. You will not [find] white Jews wearing yarmulke [a skull cap] doing the hard work or ‘hand work.’ The supervisors who run the factory are mainly Russian and they are managed mainly by the white Jews, and we are ‘Palestinians,’ only workers.”

During discussions between a Forward reporter and about a half-dozen of these Palestinian employees, conducted out of earshot of Israeli managers, none complained of labor abuses, or of receiving pay below the Israeli minimum wage. Asked about the calls by anti-occupation activists to boycott SodaStream, one spoke about the dearth of jobs in the Palestinian Authority economy.

One mid-level Palestinian employee who spoke to Reuters outside the plant, away from the bosses, painted a far less perfect picture, however.

"There's a lot of racism here," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Most of the managers are Israeli, and West Bank employees feel they can't ask for pay rises or more benefits because they can be fired and easily replaced."

So we have a case study here. Four reports, two contradicting the other two. Which is accurate?

Obviously, Electronic Intifada has no journalistic integrity whatsoever. It is literally impossible to believe that their reporter would ever admit that some Arab employees are happy. If she interviewed ten workers and only one was critical, that would be the one quoted.

I've shown that Noah Browning is biased. I would not be surprised if he called up EI and asked for the name of the person they interviewed last year to save himself some effort of finding a disgruntled employee himself.

JTA and the Forward are both Jewish publications. But both are very left wing and anti-settlement. They are both highly critical of the Israeli government. The Forward just published an op-ed from Peace Now advocating boycotting SodaStream. It would be difficult to say that they are biased towards finding workers who would sing the praises of SodaStream. Yet - that's who they found.

So who is more credible? The answer is obvious.

If SodaStream was treating its workers like slaves, they would be leaving and finding other jobs. That does not seem to be the case here.

I'm not saying that the person (or people) interviewed by Browning and EI is lying. Every company has disgruntled employees. Any reporter can, and often does, play the game of finding just the right person to support the reporter's pre-existing bias. This is how journalists can lie with facts.

And this is almost certainly what we are seeing here from Reuters and Electronic Intifada.

85. The Mission heard of situations where villagers must travel several kilometres to get water when closer water resources serve neighbouring settlements. Settlements benefit from enough water to run farms and orchards, and for swimming pools and spas, while Palestinians often struggle to access the minimum water requirements. The Mission heard that some settlements consume around 400 l/c/d56, whereas Palestinian consumption is 73 l/c/d, and as little as 10-20 l/c/d57 for Bedouin communities which depend on expensive and low quality tanker water.

In East Jerusalem houses built without a permit cannot connect to the water network.

86. Water shortages are further exacerbated by restrictions on movement, destruction of infrastructure, expropriations, forced evictions and settler violence, which also largely contributes to diminishing access to water for Palestinians.

The denial of water is used to trigger displacement, particularly in areas slated for settlement expansion, especially since these communities are mostly farmers and herders who depend on water for their livelihoods. A number of testimonies highlighted that the cutting off from water resources often precedes dispossession of lands for new settlement projects.